Oscars 2013: Flipping the Bird at Fanboys? Part II

The ultimate effect of the shooting on public reception to The Dark Knight Rises will never be known, but even after the movie opened to less enthusiasm than The Avengers or even its predecessor, and even after people expressed the view that it was simply not as good a movie as The Dark Knight had been, there was still much love for Nolan's Batman swansong.

Earlier this week, the AMPAS finally released the complete list of nominees, and while it was not particularly surprising that neither The Dark Knight Rises nor The Avengers, featured in either of the major categories, what came to this particular fan as a genuine shock was that between these two intelligent, very well-made comic-book based movies produced by filmmakers with considerable pedigree and, between them, several Oscar wins or nominations, they could only muster one nomination: a single nod for the visual effects of The Avengers. The Dark Knight Rises was ignored completely.

Perhaps it would help to explain the reason behind my surprise. Since Richard Donner's Superman picked up three Oscar nominations and an award for its visual effects in 1978, movies based on comic books could almost always be counted on to garner some kind of recognition, if only for their technical achievements. Tim Burton's 1989 take on Batman took home an Oscar for Anton Furst's art direction. Two out of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy of films picked up a total of five nominations in visual effects and sound categories, with Spider-Man 2 winning the award for visual effects. The first Iron Man film picked up three Oscar nominations, albeit all in technical categories.

Christopher Nolan's Batman films, at least as far as awards and awards nominations are concerned, are pretty much in a class of their own. The first film in his trilogy, Batman Begins, scored a nomination for Best Cinematography, a relatively prestigious category, and The Dark Knight, even though it was snubbed for the major awards, snagged a whopping eight, nominations, eventually taking home two, one of which was for the late Heath Ledger's almost universally-acclaimed take on longtime Bat-villain the Joker.

That the last film in Nolan's Bat trilogy garnered zero nominations as opposed to the last film's eight, as well as the eight picked up by Nolan's last work, Inception, cannot possibly be an indictment of the film's overall craftsmanship, the standard of which Nolan quite arguably maintained, at least on many if not most levels. Heck, Richard Corliss, a highly respected film critic for TIME magazine, has put it on the magazine's yearly top ten list.

The same, to my mind, can be said of the lack of any other Oscar nominations for The Avengers apart from its visual effects, considering that the film, at least as a technical achievement, quite easily towers over the first Iron Man. I cannot even help but

It is my opinion that the shocking dearth of nominations for comic-book related films, even in the technical categories, is, more than anything else, a categorical statement of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that whatever anyone else may believe, they do not give a rat's ass what internet fanboys around the world think, a statement that they were willing to make even if it meant overlooking the hard work of dozens of highly deserving craftsmen and women. To put it another way, I think Oscar voters did this to spite fanboys. Sure, I could quite easily be wrong, but I dare the AMPAS as a body to openly disclose how they arrived at their decision making. They never will, for the same reason they'll never explain any of several dozen messed up choices for Best Picture or various other categories over 85 years.

This is what makes me angry enough to write such a long-winded post; assuming my theory is correct, it is thanks to the antics and ultimate self-importance of obnoxious fanboys so obsessed with a film they had not even seen yet that they were willing to post death threats to critics voicing their opinions, that the most prestigious awards-giving body for motion pictures in the entire world has decided to snub not just one but two highly successful comic book-based movies.

In the great scheme of things, the Oscars don't really matter. Some people in the film industry have won Oscars and yet gone on to see their careers crumble, and some people have gone their whole lives without winning Oscars and yet have had the respect of both audiences and their peers until their death. Not only that, but time and again the Oscars have been accused of being a corrupt political exercise, accusations which may not be entirely untrue. So really, if The Avengers only got one Oscar nod or The Dark Knight Rises got none it really is not any indication of either film's quality or lack of it.

The thing of it is...there are fans like me who don't threaten film critics or shout like maniacs on the internet, who would very much like to see the films we love rewarded with recognition, even if it is just in the technical categories. It would make us happy to see the people who worked hard to entertain us acknowledged and honored by their peers in the industry. This snub is genuinely frustrating to people like me.

Not only that, but in choosing their candidates for this year's Oscars, the members of the AMPAS did not completely shun popular movies; the billion-dollar James Bond mega-blockbuster, Skyfall, has scooped up five nominations including nods for Cinematography and Best Original Song. And there's still the lone Avengers nomination. Oscar doesn't hate popcorn movies by any stretch of the imagination, but in view of this monumental snub I'm starting to think he hates fanboys.

So, really, to the troglodytes who got rottentomatoes.com shut down and who may have given a lot of people the impression that devotees of comic-book based films are basically the scum of the earth, thanks a lot. It is quite possible that you have taken the gains made by the likes of Christopher Nolan, Jon Favreau and Joss Whedon, who have taken great pains to move comic book movies away from the camp with which they are too often associated and towards the respectability they deserve, and flushed them down the toilet. Looks like it's back to square one.